National Broadband Map Shows Digital Divide 182
Hugh Pickens writes writes "PC Magazine reports that the Commerce Department has unveiled a national broadband inventory map, which will allow the public to see where high-speed Internet is available throughout the country. Users can search by address, view data on a map, or use other interactive tools to compare broadband across various geographies, such as states, counties or congressional districts. Commerce officials say the information can help businesses decide if they want to move to a certain location, based on broadband availability. The map, costing about $200 million and financed through the 2009 Recovery Act, shows that 5-10 percent of Americans lack broadband access at speeds that support a basic set of applications. Another 36 percent lack access to wireless service. Community anchor institutions like schools and libraries are also 'largely underserved,' the data finds, and two-thirds of surveyed schools subscribe to speeds lower than 25 Mbps and only 4 percent of libraries subscribe to speeds greater than 25 Mbps. 'The National Broadband Map shows there are still too many people and community institutions lacking the level of broadband service needed to fully participate in the Internet economy,' says Larry Strickling, assistant secretary of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). 'We are pleased to see the increase in broadband adoption last year, particularly in light of the difficult economic environment, but a digital divide remains.'"
/. News Networks (Score:4, Insightful)
Today's top story is how prominent ISPs received government funding to extend broadband access to more of America and blew it on bonuses and advertisement. And possibly blow.
In related news, ISPs are complaining about how expensive people who use their entire bandwidth allotment are.
Missing some data (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice job, Feds. (Score:4, Insightful)
Would have been nice to have put this map showing where the good connections are on a good connection so that more than 10 people can use it at once.
Re:$200 million? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Census as spelled out in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 2) has two purposes: it determines the number of representatives each state gets to elect and send to the House of Representatives. Unlike the Senate wherein each state gets two representatives, the House is proportional to the population of each state. It also determines the number of electoral votes a state may cast during a Presidential election.
It's not unreasonable to want the government to stick to the actual limited purpose of this power, instead of finding clever ways to exceed the Constitutional mandate to go beyond the scope of what the Founders intended. If they really want to do that, there is a Constitutional amendment process that would make it legitimate and that's the part I think you fail to appreciate. Intrusive questions like those about your income and lifestyle have absolutely nothing to do with the requirement that the House and electoral votes are properly apportioned.
Otherwise, those who refuse to answer the Census with anything more than the Constitutionally-required data are implicitly recognizing one important fact: information is a form of power. There are many who quite rationally believe that the U.S. Federal Government is already too powerful. Just to make the point, there have already been abuses of this data. In fact, it greatly facilitated the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. This was made possible because the Second War Powers Act of 1941 repealed all of the legal confidentiality protections that would normally apply to the Census data, which were not restored until 1947.
If you know anything about the U.S. Federal Government and the kind of people who make its important decisions, then you have to wonder whom they will next target. Maybe it will be Muslims or people of Middle Eastern descent, since we are currently fighting them overseas. History does have this annoying way of repeating itself. Refusing to help that happen is not a matter of spiting the government or anyone else; it's a recognition that there is no dire need for them to know so much about you and that this information can be and has been abused. I don't question the reason of those who understand this; I question the naivete of those who don't.
Re:$200 million? (Score:2, Insightful)
"Spite" is what drives politics for a significant portion of the electorate and about half the political leadership. When you're morally bankrupt and intellectually suspect, spite is all that's left.
For the electorate, when you've been through thirty years of watching your income and lifestyle eroded while a small portion of the population gains enormous wealth, it's easy to become spiteful. People are too busy trying to survive to pay attention. And that makes them easy to manipulate. In this sense, the social and political strategy put in place back in the 1980s is now starting to bear fruit. When the TV tells you that your world is crumbling because school teachers and firefighters are getting pensions, and your employer tells you that they've decided it's not "cost-effective" to continue to provide your pension, "spite" is what happens.